Hick in the City: A Surf Report Road Trip, vol. 3

As I emerged from the subway station in Brooklyn, I saw a sign that reminded me of a stoopid joke I heard years ago:

Q: What do Brooklyn and pantyhose have in common?
A: Flatbush

Yes, we’re all buckled-over in laughter now, huh? Anyway, I was apparently in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, and made a mental note to investigate the possibility of making a pilgrimage to the former site of Ebbets Field, later in the day. It had to be nearby, I knew.

In the meantime, I was supposed to call Jenny, my agent, as soon as I got off the train. I was running about fifteen minutes behind schedule, so any exploring would have to wait until later.

Jenny apparently lives and/or works nearby, and was there within five minutes. Despite her back pain, she was very upbeat and friendly. When my back hurts I feel like telling everyone to ram it deep and on a slant. But if she felt that way, she’s very good at hiding it.

As we walked toward the restaurant, Jenny told me that years ago two planes collided and a large passenger jet crashed into the middle of this neighborhood. Here’s some info on it, and here are a bunch of photos. Pretty amazing. I looked around and didn’t see any obvious scars on the buildings, but apparently a few still exist.

We had lunch at a Cuban restaurant, and I was suddenly wheezing and suffering from the early onset of kazoo-neck. What the hell? I’d been fine all day, but now my hay fever was kicking-up something fierce. Was I allergic to Brooklyn? Probably not, but it seemed that way.

We ordered our meals, and began talking about my plans, and how I should proceed. She asked how Crossroads Road was coming along, and I admitted that it’s selling well, but not great. She reminded me that promotion should be yet another of my full-time jobs.

This was my first time meeting Jenny face-to-face, but I was already very fond of her. She’s exactly the kind of agent I need: funny, smart, not afraid to voice an opinion, and down-to-earth. I don’t want to burn any bridges here… but she’s almost the exact opposite of what I had before. I feel very lucky to have her by my side.

“What’s wrong with your eyes?” she said at one point, and I tried to blow it off. What am I, Nostrils now? Will I need to start carrying a puffer soon? Sheesh. I was struggling, but trying to hide it. And she was suffering from back pain, and probably trying to put that out of her mind, as well. We were the walking-wounded, eating Cuban food in Brooklyn.

We got some things accomplished during our lunch meeting, and I’ve decided what my next project is going to be. I’m planning to start work on an outline, notes, etc. right away, and get into the writing once school cranks-up again. During the summer I’m going to focus most of my energy on Crossroads Road, and trying to make complete strangers interested enough to read it.

So, I came away from it with a battle plan, and that makes me feel better. I don’t like being adrift…

We said our goodbyes near the subway station, and I told her I was going to do a little exploring before returning to Manhattan. “You can probably buy some Benadryl at one of these stores around here,” she offered. I guess I wasn’t doing a very good job of masking my weird hay fever flare-up?

I found a shady place on the street, and took out my phone. Within roughly one minute, I had the address of the old Ebbets Field, and typed it into Google Maps. Just 1.8 miles from where I was standing… Huh. That’s not very far, but not exactly right around the corner, either.

I thought about it, and decided against such an adventure. I felt really weird, and knew that at the end of my two-mile walk, I’d just be staring at a big apartment building. That’s what they built on hallowed ground… Check it out.

I just walked around the neighborhood, and looked at the old brownstone apartments. Very cool. I tried to imagine how it was during the 1940s, and it wasn’t too difficult an exercise. Except for the modern cars everywhere, I have a feeling things looked roughly the same. Roughly the same, with kids playing stickball in the street.

I took the train back to Port Authority, and would have found a bar under normal circumstances. But since I’m on an almost month-long no-beer streak, I decided against it. It was about 4:30 now, and I felt like I’d been beaten with a pillowcase full of new potatoes. So I just went downstairs and boarded a bus back to Scranton.

And it was packed… What the hell, man? I don’t understand why so many people shuttle back and forth between those two places. Granted, most would undoubtedly get off in the Poconos (also baffling), but many would go all the way to the end of the line. Like me.

There weren’t too many open seats, and I sat down beside a guy wearing an Amazon dotcom t-shirt, windbreaker, and baseball cap. After I got my big ass situated, I said, “So, do you work for Amazon, or just really, really like them?” He laughed, but made it clear that he wasn’t interested in any lengthy chats. And that’s cool. I don’t like people either.

Immediately I fell asleep, and kept jerking awake. I was paranoid about snoring. I had it in my mind that I was clear-cutting timber, just wide-open. I don’t know if it was true, but every time I drifted off I’d get self-conscious in my sleep. Yes, I’m riddled with neuroses.

After we shed 75% of the passengers in the Poconos, the bus broke down. I don’t know what was going on, but the driver pulled into a parking lot and the engine was revving way up. “We can’t continue in this bus,” he announced across his shoulder, and every person simultaneously groaned.

The idiot white trash couple seated behind me commenced to bitching, and never stopped until the replacement bus arrived and we were on our way again. “This is fucking bullshit,” they kept repeating, in front of their 12 year old son. I wanted to turn around and tell them to shut the hell up, but suspected that all three of them could kick my ass.

It wasn’t a long wait, and within fifteen minutes or so, we were back on the road. And when I got on the new bus, I was rid of ol’ Amazon Gift Shop, and snagged a seat without a partner. Ahhh… much better.

We arrived in Scranton around 7:30, and I went to Wendy’s for a quick dinner. And I looked around at all the people wearing enormous t-shirts and flip-flops and filthy baseball caps… Man, oh man. It didn’t take long for my New York trance to be broken.

I was back in the “real” world.

Next time I’ll get back to the regular stuff. Thanks for sticking with me through this trilogy… Nancy and the gang will be arriving later tonight, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to update tomorrow. Probably not, but who knows what might happen.

It’s amazing how such a short trip can take you into a completely different world. Sounds like you got a lot accomplished. Glad that smartphone worked out so well. I’m interested to see what marketing surprises you have for us.

I don’t need to reach you guys, I need to reach people who don’t know anything about me or this website. So, you might not notice anything out of the ordinary, but I’m gonna be pimping the book in the background. In fact, I am already.

No shit. And it seems as if Jeff’s edginess and sarcasm has just slid past 7.3 and ‘in to the red’. Unless the whole clan shows up over-medicated on cough syrup, they’re arriving just as Jeff is hitting his stride and in fine fettle. Like grooving a pitch down the middle to Barry Bonds.

Anyone else having problems reaching the site today? Jeff, I emailed you about it. If I google wvsr and click on the first result, or click through from my google reader, it takes me to a russian site that my work filter identifies as pornography. That filter also identifies my student loan company’s page as pornography, so it’s not necessarily accurate, or maybe it just has a sense of humor.

The shortcut I’ve saved in RocketDock worked just fine, but then I just had to try the Google search for “wvsr”. The link that purports to lead to this site resulted in a red alert from my antivirus (ESET), and some of the nastiness that I’ve heard comes from clicking on a bad porn site. Not that I’d recognize it, of course, but it started a “Computer Scan” and even had a click-through after closing the window to verify that I wanted to leave the site. It’s taken hours to clean up a computer after one of those episodes (uh, so I’ve heard), so I won’t be doing that again.

@Jeff….YES promotion should be a major part! I’ve mentioned Crossroads Road on my radio show…but you really need to come to Nome, Alaska and do a book signing thing during the Midnight Sun Folk Festival later this month.

Weird how life can change “seemingly” overnight. A few years ago I was so worried fot you when you lost your job…now you are in the “almost famous” category. Jeff, pleeeeeeze don’t get too famous to update the Surf Report a few times a week, Heck there is a new novel in your readers all alone. …but if they make it into a movie, I want to be played by the ghost of Bea Arthur!

My neighbor Dan loves his weed. No problem, he keeps to himself. But he came out last night and saw me on the swing, drinking beers. Then he came over and decided to have few beers with me. I could tell he was baked out of his mind. He kept bringing up deep, weird shit. So I decided to play with him.

I said, “Dan, do you realize that everything you eat turns to either shit or puke? Everything! That can’t be good for your body, carrying around all that shit and puke all the time.” He sat and pondered that for a while. The he got up and walked without saying a word. So maybe I blew his mind. I don’t know.

I got the first of possibly 3 deliveries of furniture today.
My living room now loooks less like a freshly abandoned shithole and more like an adult type of dwelling.
One major exception is the stark white cable strung across an archway using picture hangers from a working cable outlet to where the BAT sits now. There is a cable outlet at the new location but it is not hooked up which means I need to get into the cable box (locked) or get into the crawlspace under the house.
I haven’t been down there yet and am not looking forward to it. I’ve spent my time under buildings and don’t enjoy it.

I hit my insurance man’s car with a high slicing golf ball Thursday evening. He said he’d take care of it. He was more amazed at how far I hit the ball, I reminded him it didn’t really matter if you can’t keep it out of the parking lot.

My first time golfing, the guy I was with allowed me a mulligan of the first tee. I actually hit it, but sliced it and it went out over the highway adjacent to the course, and bounced off the roof of a Pleasant’s County school bus. My friend was so doubled up on the ground in laughter, that he looked like he was passing a kidney stone (sans the laughter, of course!)

johnthebasket…Ocean Shores Golf Club? Is that by any chance Ocean Shores, Washington?

Sure, Ocean Shores Golf Club, now Ocean Shores Golf Course. Constructed with capital from Pat Boone and his cronies back in the 1960s when Ocean Shores was going to be the next Carmel/Pebble Beach.

Pat neglected to inform his investors that when it isn’t foggy and cold in Ocean Shores, it’s drizzling and cold. Everything went to hell in about three years. Now it’s just a funky tourist town with beautiful beaches if you don’t mind the fog and drizzle.

Since I’m from Washington, I wouldn’t know what to do at the beach without fog and drizzle, so I kinda like it there. There’s now an Indian casino, which takes the sting out of the frostbite.

I took my first step just north of Ocean Shores in 1950. I haven’t stopped stepping there yet.

That is totally cool! One of my best friends from here in Nome (originally from Hoquiam) is retiring to Ocean Shores in July! And weirdness of weirdness, speaking of golf…Jack Nicklaus made a brief stop here in Nome, Alaska last week to have his plane refueled before going on to South Korea to design a golf course.

Hey Jeff,
I got a ride to the site of the former Ebbets field when I was a kid. It wasn’t worth it, you didn’t miss anything except a crappy housing project. I don’t know what that neighborhood is like these days but maybe a wise decision not to go. There’s a pretty good cheesecake restaurant on Flatbush avenue near the Brooklyn bridge but I can’t remember the name of it any more.

There are no terrific meds for combating allergies, but my allergy friends all carry antihistamines to manage the worst symptoms. They have few side effects, and will reasonably well dry you up for a while.

You are entirely welcome to your no drug policy, but meds like aspirin, antihistamines, vitamins and antibiotics have fewer side effects than a six of your favorite brew. There will come a time when your doc suggests cholesterol, blood pressure, anxiety, or pain meds. Some people will tell you that eating fish gizzards or drinking lots of pig blood or other awful shit is a reasonable substitute. Mostly, it isn’t. Cholesterol and blood pressure levels, for example, are materially a matter of DNA. By all means, chow down on fish gizzards, but when those fail to work take the meds. I’d like you to live a very long life.

jtb – my husbnad successfuly lowered his blood pressure AND cholesterol without meds. Made a few changes in his diet and takes a shitload of supplements – including the fish gizzard – fish oil. It really can be done if you’re willing to make changes. He’s 62 years old and looks younger than guys int heir 50s! (OK, Im beginning to sound like a commercial now).

Congrats to the hubby. About 20% of men over 50 can lower LDL and raise HDL sufficiently with diet and exercise. The five year success rate of this 20% is a little less than 50%, which means that about one out of ten American men can make the numbers using diet and exercise only. And that’s great. Good diet, weight management and regular exercise benefits many parts of the body, so if you can do it, do it.

If not, take the meds (you should still watch fat intake and exercise of course). An LDL under 100 and an HDL over 40 (with appropriate triglyceride levels) can statistically reduce five year heart attack risk by up to 80% and five year stroke risk by up to 50%.

By the way, low cholesterol doesn’t make you look younger. That’s genetics. Your ol’ man was probably just a handsome guy from the git-go. Of course, living like Keith Richards can make you look like Keith Richards, so the hubby probably stayed away from the heavy drugs and that second bottle of scotch.

Speaking OF Keith Richards…his wife is Patti Hansen, the girl in the white sweater in Rick Springfiel’s movie Hard to Hold.” Hey, if I was guaranteed a wife that pretty, I’d be hittin’ the booze, smokes, and drugs really hard(er)! lol

Dunno HDL from LDL, but I did significantly lower my blood pressure when I divorced my first wife,, lol! Of course, now I’m married again with a couple of crumb snatchers. I truly am a heart attack waiting to happen. But hey, at least they take the Summer off and spend it with Grandma back on the East Coast!

I find it curious that you refuse to go #2 at work but you managed to fall asleep on a bus while paranoid about snoring. It seems to me that you are much more vulnerable in a semi conscious state, sharing a seat on public transportation than say; on high alert, locked in a thin walled steel and porcelain cubicle inside a security controled building.

Lots of weird photos are popping up on the interweb, let’s hope that Amazon Boy wasn’t a Tea-Bagger.

>After we shed 75% of the passengers in the Poconos, the bus broke down. I don’t know what was going on, but the driver pulled into a parking lot and the engine was revving way up.

This happened to me, also on a bus departing Port Authority. A sleety day, and the wipers on the driver’s side began to fade, then conk out completely. He pulled onto the shoulder of the freeway, and the 45 minute wait began. Finally, a bus appeared. We were ordered to walk through two inches of sleet–yes, on the throughway shoulder, next to zooming cars–to board. My feet were cold, but I was happy. My seatmate had been making numerous cellphone calls, attempting to free himself from an onerous debt–drug or crime based, from the look of it–and I was relieved to be free of him.

Let’s be honest here, contrary to popular belief, there wasn’t a lot of oral sex going on in the old west. The hygiene was just too bad. No dude wanted to go down on an untamed bush that hadn’t seen a bath in 6 six months. And vice-versa. This, my friends, made lesbianism very rare indeed.

WB…still on for the game? My old-school shirt and hat are freshly worshed and I/we/us/them should strike a fine pose. I’ll bring the logo paper work too since you’ll be with the people who still wear a suite and tie to a ballgame (fedora optional) and I’ll be with people who are always on the verge of being thrown out.

Jeff…I just went two days without a beer. (Whoo fucking whooo).Just because I guess. But I have a boat-load of reality getting ready to dock I need to get it off-loaded. Bigger boat than I thought.Then I’ll have a beer. Or it might be bourbon season by then.

I was using the fuckit button for a while but I messed up and can’t take it. Swearengen’s line was a great sarcastic, “Wooo fucking whooo”. I like Deadwood too much to let bad spelling mess that up. Hey…not much else to do at 4:40am here. Just sitting around waiting for my ship to come in.

How about before the first pitch? 6:30 or so. It could take awhile to navigate from Bob’s suite to the beverage center you describe, then again, his personal elevator will probably bring me to within 50′.

As I’m sure you’re aware, poor old Edward Peabody Mott took his own life when he found out that his wife and son were practicing incest.

He put a flare gun in his mouth in his kitchen and pulled the trigger. His wife and son heard the noise, put on their clothes, and ran to see what was the matter. The flare hadn’t killed him. So they sent off for a doctor. Before the doctor arrived Mr. Mott stabbed himself 33 times with an ice pick. Still didn’t kill him. The doctor came in and ran to get assistance. Mr. Mott quickly consumed 2 pounds of table salt, and finally died. Nobody is sure what killed him.

But his famous poem, “Let Them Fuck Cake”, from which the line quoted above was stolen, lives on in the heart of mankind.

Conspiracy theories abound, however. The death certificate was found to be lacking, as the attending doctor MISSPELLED HIS OWN NAME, and lost his life just 3 months later in a tragic threshing mishap.

Mott, “The Mad Monk of Funk,” was supposedly buried on a sunny hillside, only to be exhumed thrice at the whim of his wife, who over time had simply become fucked silly by her son, who hanged himself twice (once successfully) in the years following his father’s “death.” Mott’s “body” was misplaced.

In the 1950’s a man known only as “Wishy Will” came forward and claimed to be Mott. Sadly, he was attacked and eaten by a shark in a creek in New Jersey only days later.

I think that Sherwood Hambone St. John’s best seller of 1957, “What Got Mott?” answers many of those questions nicely. It seems that the son’s perverted exploits led him from incest to homsexual necrophilia incest, thus explaining the exhuming of the great Ed P. Mott’s body. The son was fucking the corpse. As if this wasn’t enough, he also enjoyed Autoerotic asphyxiation, which eventually led to his demise (much like David Carradine). His body and that of his father was buried in the same casket in La Recoleta Cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This was done to save the mad mother money and to hide the disgrace that she’d lorded over for most of a century.

“Wishy Will” turned out to be a crackpot habitual masturbator who was trying to cash in on the fame after learning that he had throat cancer.

It’s sad how we, as a people, continue to search for answers when something terrible happens. Then all of these theories pop up (Billy the Kid, Elvis, Jacko, the moon landing) to try to make sense of it all.

“Bradley was already an experienced balloonist with over one hundred ascensions and proven records of altitude: (6.900m); endurance on flight (28h10min) and distance covered in-flight (900 km, to Rio Grande do Sul from Buenos Aires).”

Jason, I’ll not argue most of the points you’ve made here. I appreciate the discussion, but I feel I may have brought a knife to the proverbial gunfight, as it were, when one considers the depth of your historical knowledge.
I will say, however, that you seem to have glossed over the small fact that Sherwood Hambone St. John was himself, in the words of his longtime editor Sir Elderberry Minz-Hucknall, “a long-suffering member of the stalking class” and a “random, iconoclastic master of over-indulgent clusterfuckery.” St. John’s book was overly dramatic and failed to cover Mott’s “blue period,” though who amongst us fails to appreciate his lurid discourse as to the actual necrophila? His line which ends, “and so the young man removed his shunted meat block and leered at his mother for approval.” BRILLIANT!

Poor Wishy Will did indeed suffer from the cancer. The bull shark cared not a whit.

I have to agree with your points on Mr. St. John. I’m not sure that it matters at this point, because the late, great, Edward P. Mott, would have died by natural causes by now, even if he managed to fake his own death early on.

As to Wishy Will, I can only quote another late, great, poet, Ezra Pound from :Sestina: Altaforte”:

“But is fit only to rot in womanish peace
Far from where worth’s won and the swords clash
For the death of such sluts I go rejoicing”

Yes. Jeff can’t entertain us today, so I invite anyone who’s bored to read up on “Ezra Pound”, he was a sick fuck. He went around fucking dudes in the woods, (and although he was married) had a mistress who dressed like a man – possibly a eunoch?- , and refused to speak with anyone who had a Jewish sounding name. His poem “Sestina: Altaforte” talks about his love for war. Then he was against war. Then he was a communist and did time because of it. He was a very twisted individual.

At the end of his life he talked on an on about how stupid he was. I’m surprised he didn’t off himself.

Don’t beat yourself up about not knowing a lot about Mr. lb. I know almost nothing about anything. But I have a blackbelt in Bullshitsu, so I can defend myself against the great unwashed. And really, that’s all that matters, not being embarrassed because you’re caught off guard. Besides not being caught fucking your Dad’s dead body, and not being caught putting anything in your ass, I’d say that not getting embarrassed should be one of life’s great goals.

If something comes up that might embarrass me, I just brush off whatever I did as a drug induced psychosis or alcohol blackout. Works.

I may have done the reply thingy wrong, here. Your modern world confuses me…
Bullshitsu is awesome- I considered it before studying Jeet Kune Doohhh!! and ConFunkShun.
The great unwashed stay away from me, though, because I’m 7’3” and wear coke bottle glasses while driving a scooter. And carrying an oaken walking stick.

The only thing that goes into this fella’s ass is the occasional bhut jolokia pepper.

And usually I’m embarrassed when I’m overly sober.
I appreciate the unnerstannin, though, bro.
Now if you’s will excuse me, I gotta see a man about a horse. Or whores. Whatever.

All five websites were thoroughly fucked again today. They were cleaned up yesterday, but the problem returned. Mockable is now blocked by Google, and the others are on thin ice. Right now they’re clean of the redirect code, but it came back last time… I’m going to have to ask the Google overlords to reconsider their blocking of Mockable, but right now I need to go to work. I wasn’t able to do an update, because I’m losing my goddamn mind over here.